


Canary's Wrath

by Ray_Writes



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/M, Post-Episode: s04e19 Canary Cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25204132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ray_Writes/pseuds/Ray_Writes
Summary: When the Black Canary is killed before her time, she is offered the chance to ascend to a higher purpose.
Relationships: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen
Comments: 23
Kudos: 39





	Canary's Wrath

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! Back with another oneshot. It’s been a while since I had the chance to work with the later seasons, so I wanted to switch it up a little bit. As it says, this goes AU after “Canary Cry”, following Laurel as she becomes something else and the effect that has on the rest of the season.
> 
> Many thanks to Okoriwadsworth and Nyame for reading this over and checking to make sure it read in-character, as well as for coming up with the title in Nyame’s case. I’ll let you all get to reading, and I hope you enjoy!

They had told her she would be fine, yet Laurel had felt compelled, somehow, to make her deathbed confession anyway. It was important to her to clear the air at last with Oliver, to let the truth free. It might even help him to know that he was still worthy of love, capable of forgiveness.

She tried to hold on long enough for her father — the true target of tonight’s attack, and wasn’t that the bitterest part? — but it just wasn’t meant to be. There was so much more she could’ve done, should’ve done. A life cut short. It wasn’t fair. But it was too late, and she was slipping away.

Until she awoke again.

She recognized this place. The empty gym, the folding chairs in a circle. Laurel did what she did at any AA meeting and took a seat, wondering where everyone else was and what she was meant to be waiting for.

There was a noise to her left, and Laurel turned her head. Sitting in the chair beside hers was a man Laurel had never seen before. He had a dark beard and hair peppered heavily with gray, and there was something calming and ancient in his gaze. Foreboding, too, but she had looked into the eyes of dangerous men before and hadn’t flinched. She didn’t do so now.

“Who are you?”

“Who I was doesn’t matter,” the man said. “Who I am is what you should be concerned with, Dinah Laurel Lance.”

“You know who _I_ am?” Laurel had to wonder what this really was. She didn’t recognize him from any part of her life. Was this some guide to the next stage or something?

“I do. You’re the Black Canary, a hero,” he told her. “In another life, I was a decorated police officer, a hero in my own right, but then I was called to a higher purpose.” He gestured around her. “Now that you have passed beyond the realm of living, you have the choice to answer that call.”

“To a higher purpose? To something other than just being dead?” Laurel didn’t want to just be dead, floating around on a cloud somewhere and watching events unfold with no way to help. Assuming that was what the afterlife was. Maybe it was nothing. An eternal sleep. She shuddered; enough of her life had been spent numbed to the world, sleepwalking through her own life because there had been nothing worth living for.

“You would pursue justice, even vengeance, against the guilty. You would be beyond their mortal powers, and you would have knowledge no mortal yet possesses about a coming Crisis unimaginable in scale and devastation,” he explained. “In another life, you might have stood against that Crisis as a hero with those you knew. Now, I believe to best prepare them, they must be able to trust the one who holds the power I currently possess.”

“How will I know what to do?” Laurel asked. It wasn’t a question of accepting; she was doing this. She was a bringer of justice, and vengeance suited the likes of the man who had tossed her life aside as a mere _message_ just fine. Justice had failed to hold Darhk behind bars, so he would face worse at her hands before she could even think about resting in peace.

“The same way you know how to throw a punch or use a staff. I will train you in everything that I know. Then you will become the Spectre.”

“The Spectre,” Laurel echoed. It wasn’t a hero’s name, really. It sounded foreboding as she had thought before. But the darkness was already inside her, and with no life left to live, it was about time she embraced it.

Jim Corrigan, as she learned he had been called in his mortal life, was true to his word. He pushed her through the training of her life, literally. Every punch she had ever thrown in the ring, every gun she had fired, every defensive maneuver she had perfected was redone and relived. Then they went even beyond that.

“This Crisis looms, in part, because of reckless changes wrought on the fabric of time itself,” Jim explained. “There was another path that your life could have taken, that of the Black Canary until the end of a life well-lived. The Spectre cannot return that life to you, but I can transfer her _strength_ to you.”

Laurel’s mind seemed to stretch and fill with new knowledge, new memories that had never happened. An early separation between her parents; running away from her alcoholic father’s home and traveling the world, learning everything there was to know about fighting to protect herself when no one else would; a Cry more powerful and dangerous bursting forth from her lips; those same lips locked in a kiss with the very same love of her life, who loved her back just as fiercely; the baby blue eyes of a son nestled in her arms; a growing family who held her up as Oliver drifted away with a smile on his face at 86; her own quiet passing a few years later.

It felt like the arrowhead was being driven into her again and twisted, this time in her heart. Laurel’s eyes welled up with tears — and wasn’t it just her luck that there were tears left to shed in Purgatory? — and the scream she had seen in the other life rattled the roof and the walls.

This had been stolen from her. She would have her vengeance on those who had done this, too.

It could have been months or years or eternity. There was no time in this place. She did not age and she did not weary. She forgot the feeling of sun or rain or wind. She felt little but cold emptiness, emptiness that could only be replaced by purpose and one that would soon be at hand.

She felt a pull on her very soul that echoed with a familiarity in her bones. Oliver, desperately reaching out, seeking aid from supernatural forces he only barely understood. He struggled to find the light in him, lost in his own darkness. She would take the darkness from him, channel it to do the things he could not.

It was time to return and seek retribution. The kind no one could run from.

\---

Malcolm Merlyn felt satisfied that everything was finally coming together. After everything he had sacrificed and conceded, the fealty he had had to pledge after losing his own power and his very hand along with it, he would see the dawning of a new age.

Darhk’s plan was on a much larger scale than his own had once been, but that had made it all the more necessary to ensure that he and his own were deemed part of the select few. Thea would thank him for it one day once she realized what he had done for her; it hadn’t been easy to convince Damien to secret one of the very vigilantes he had been fighting the better part of the year into the inner sanctum that the dome represented. H.I.V.E.’s leader was retrieving Rubicon tonight, and after that it would be a short time until the missiles were launched and the surface of the Earth turned to little but ash.

Oliver and his team had lost. They didn’t realize how fully, yet, but he thought Oliver must know; must have known from the moment Laurel had breathed her last. Why else would he have allowed his sister a vacation, or gone on some fruitless trip to learn magic as if he expected to beat a master at it after a few hours’ practice? The group of heroes was directionless and still unaware of what was to come. It made perfect sense that Malcolm should have sided with Darhk. At least he and Thea would make it out of this alive.

Thea had arrived underground with the young man whose affections she was currently entertaining. He finished preparing the drug he would have to give her if she refused to cooperate, yet as he went to pick up the syringe to store it in a pouch on his belt, it rolled away from him. Malcolm frowned and reached again, and it rolled the other way.

He looked up. “Damien?”

There was no answer.

With honed reflexes, he plucked the syringe up from the table quick enough that it couldn’t move. Whatever had just happened, it was no match for him.

Then the syringe shattered in his hand.

“Ah!” Malcolm stumbled to the sink, washing tiny slivers of glass and trails of blood from his skin. He did not need damage to the one flesh and blood hand he had left. And how had it happened?

“You never really were sorry about drugging her the first time, were you?”

Malcolm gasped and whirled around. Standing in the kitchen was an impossibility.

“You… you can’t be here. You’re dead.”

“Death is exactly why I’m here,” said Laurel Lance. “The deaths you’ve caused have finally caught up with you, Malcolm. And your guilt is beyond doubt.”

His senses were screaming at him to fight or to flee. Whatever this was, it could not be Dinah Laurel Lance. He therefore felt not a shred of hesitation as he slipped a knife out of the block and flung it with precision — only for it to sail through her and embed itself in the wall behind.

“What,” he began, and swallowed around a mouth gone dry. “What is this? What are you?”

“I am the Spectre.” A black cloak suddenly folded down around her, a hood descending over her face, as her eyes glowed a bright green. Plates and mugs rattled in the cabinets, drawers pulled out and cutlery rose into the air. “My task is to punish the guilty whom the living cannot touch.”

The faucets turned on and began filling the basin as the plug went into the drain.

“Do you ever think about the men who drowned that night in the sea? Have you ever wondered how it might feel?”

“You can’t possibly expect to—” Malcolm made a run for it, around the kitchen island and through an archway into the sitting room. He could flee to any number of homes in this underground base, line low until Damien returned to expel the spirit of the woman Malcolm had watched him murder.

A great _boom_ shook the house before he made it to the door, and Malcolm fell under the weight of part of the ceiling collapsing. Enough to pin him, but not crush him.

“There were many who died like this at your hand,” the Spectre told him, seeming to float around the ruin into his sight line. “Tell me, what made their lives worth less than your ambitions?”

“Laurel, stop this!” He begged. Another wall had collapsed and the weight was pressing down on him. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. Water covered the floor an inch deep and was rising. “I’m Thea’s father.”

“Yes, you are.” She raised an arm, and the wood and plaster and metal peeled back away from him. He drew in a shuddering breath.

Malcolm tensed as he felt three steps pulled from the quiver strapped to his back. Then he was flipped over, unable to move as those arrows rose into the air, then pointed down towards his chest.

“The murder she committed is your guilt, too.”

“ _Laurel_!”

The arrows shot down with no bow to fire them. Malcolm felt a sharp, piercing pain as they punctured his chest and then was no more.

\---

Thea didn’t know why or how this vacation had turned into a nightmare, but she wanted out now. Only problem with that was, there wasn’t a way out.

She pounded against whatever wall the fake sky was made of, not feeling it give even an inch. What even was this place?

A distant _boom_ had her turning around. Something was going on, and if she could find out what maybe she would find a way out as well. Thea ran back into the quiet little suburb, searching for the source of the disturbance when a chilling scream stole her breath.

“ _Laurel_!”

That had been Malcolm’s voice. He was here? And why had he said…?

Thea found a growing crowd gathering across the street from one of the cookie-cutter homes, only this one had seemingly collapsed in on itself. In the ruins lay her father’s broken body, a trail of blood leaking from his mouth. Thea was stunned speechless.

A cloaked figure stood over him, and as people whispered and murmured to each other in shock, the figure lifted their head to show off glowing green eyes and a frown on a face that Thea knew devastatingly well. She knew, too, why her father’s last word had been what it was. She gasped, but the woman who was somehow _Laurel_ rose high into the air.

“Each of you agreed to join Damien Darhk deep below the Earth,” the figure said in Laurel’s voice, harsh and booming. “You believed yourselves to be the chosen few, the worthy. You turned your backs on humanity and wait for them to die.”

A rumbling started up. Panes of glass or whatever material the false sky was made of started to drop out of the ceiling one by one. People cried out, and parents hugged their children to them in terror.

“You will suffer the fate you left them to instead.”

“Wait!” Thea shouted, running out into the street to place herself apart from the crowd. If this went badly, she didn’t want anyone else caught in the crossfire. “Not everyone agreed to this.”

The cloaked woman paused, one arm lifted.

“I was taken down here without knowing what this place was. I’m still not sure what it has to do with Darhk’s plans,” Thea began. “And, and there’s children here. They didn’t get a choice, either. They’re minors, so they can’t consent,” she added, thinking of her lost friend and how she would have presented an argument such as this in a courtroom.

The woman — for it couldn’t truly be Laurel, not with everything she had done, considered this. Then hatch-like doors were flung open in the walls, revealing tunnels leading out and up from the dome. “Leave this place then, and never return.” And she vanished into thin air.

Thea stared up at the skies in vain, trying to spot her as the people in their gray uniforms began to flee. What had just happened? How could a being that powerful exist, and why did she have Laurel’s face? What had happened to her friend?

For now, all she could do was get to the surface and find the others. They needed to know about this apparition, whether it was friend or foe.

\---

Oliver sped down the streets towards the open back doors of the truck Damien Darhk stood in. He had little hope of countering the man based on what Esrin Fortuna had told him about the darkness within him, but he could not allow further harm to come to his loved ones. If John lost Lyla the way he had lost Laurel… no one should ever feel that pain again.

It would be different for John, of course. At least Lyla knew how much her husband loved her. Oliver had let Laurel die believing herself not to be loved by him. He had lost the one person who continued to believe in him despite all he had done, and only when it had happened had he realized all the time he had wasted.

Darhk saw his approach and walked to the edge of the truck floor, arm raising — yet then he ducked as if dodging an attack. It happened a second time, and Darhk whirled from left to right.

“Show yourself! Enough with the games— ah!”

Oliver could not tell if it was gravity, the sharp movements on the edge of the truck or something else that knocked Darhk to the ground. The man went rolling, and Oliver turned his motorcycle to follow his path.

He cut the engine on the shoulder of the road, mere feet from Darhk who was only beginning to stand with his suit rumpled and torn. Oliver breathed in deeply, centering himself and searching within for the light as Esrin had explained. He thought of the team, of his family, of Laurel.

And it was Laurel’s voice that answered his seeking. “Damien Darhk.”

Before his eyes, a cloaked figure rippled into being just behind Darhk’s shoulder. The sorcerer spun and struck with a debilitating blow he would have learned in the League, yet it passed straight through, sending him sprawling back in the dirt. Standing there without Darhk obscuring her, Oliver could see the woman clearly, and his breath caught.

_Laurel._

She turned away, towards Darhk who was again struggling back to his feet.

“You would set the world afire and begin it anew under your guidance. You are not a God, Damien, but a man who has incurred His Wrath.” There was something different to the timbre of her voice, not-quite her. A great power seemed to course through every word.

Darhk seemed to know it, too. “What are you?”

“I am the Spectre. I seek vengeance against the guilty.”

Darhk had gone, if possible, paler than he typically was. The name meant something to him. He caught sight of Oliver and raised his hand. Oliver felt his breath stutter in his chest for a single moment as he froze, but Laurel’s eyes shone with brilliant green light as she turned her head sharply in his direction.

Oliver’s breath returned, and he watched Damien sink to his knees, his hands going to his throat as his eyes bulged.

“Laurel,” Oliver said. She made no indication of hearing him, and seconds later Darhk fell on his side, a small chip slipping from his slackened grasp to land on the ground. The Spectre crushed it under her heel.

“Laurel,” Oliver pleaded this time. Whatever the Spectre meant or was, she could not have her form by accident. He had to believe there was something of the woman he had loved in her.

She turned on the spot towards him slowly, the cloak receding, and she was Laurel in jeans and a jacket and a loose-fitting shirt like he knew her best. Her eyebrows raised and her lips turned not quite to a smile. “Hi, Ollie.”

His lips pressed tight together, water stinging his eyes, and Oliver took two strides to reach her and pull her into his embrace. To his immense relief, he did not phase through Laurel’s body the way Darhk had. She felt real and solid in his arms.

“How- how is this possible?”

“After everything that’s happened in your life, are you really surprised by anything anymore?”

He pulled back, hands cupping her face. “I guess there’s not much that can keep a Lance down.” She watched him, her smile still small and not fully reaching her eyes. “Laurel, what… what is the Spectre?”

“It’s what I am now,” she answered simply. “A higher purpose I was called to after my death. I’m not really alive anymore, Ollie. Not in the way Sara is.”

He shook his head, thumbs brushing her cheeks. “Laurel, you’re — whatever this is, we can figure it out. The whole team. We’ve missed you so much. We need you.”

“But I can’t return,” she disputed. “Laurel Lance is dead, and if she was alive she would be a hunted vigilante.”

He let go of her, his stomach dropping. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t. You couldn’t know this would happen. None of this was ever meant to,” Laurel said, a faint glow in her eyes again. “In another time, the Green Arrow and Black Canary fought side by side for years, but the constant meddling with time changed things, stole the life I would have had. A life with you.” She lifted her own hand to his cheek for a moment, then let it fall. “If I can’t have that life, then I want to be more than I was in life.”

Oliver struggled past the lump that threatened to block off his voice. “Where will you go?”

“Wherever there’s injustice.”

That caused him to smile, a twist of the mouth that felt painful. “Dinah Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world.”

“I’m not the world’s savior anymore, Ollie. I’m its avenger. It will be up to you and the other heroes to save this Earth and the many besides it.”

He didn’t understand what she meant by that last part, but it didn’t matter to him in the moment. “You were my hero,” he told her fiercely. “You are. And I love you, Laurel, _please_ , you have to know that. I love you so much I couldn’t stand it at times—”

“Oliver!”

“Ollie!”

His teammates came running from opposite directions. John with his helmet off and baby Sara handed to Lyla who waited some ways off, and Thea in a plaid coat. He stopped in his tracks and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

A flutter of something in the wind had him looking back at Laurel, who had donned the Spectre’s cloak again.

“Please don’t leave,” he whispered. “Your father, Sara…”

“I will come to them when they need me most. Just as you will see me again,” she promised.

He didn’t know how she expected him to survive this a second time. But Oliver reached beneath the hood and pushed it back, bringing her lips to his. If she had to leave, he would not let it be without her knowing the truth.

Laurel responded to his kiss, but already she had begun fading away. She slipped through his fingers and left his mouth tingling with the phantom touch of hers. When he opened his eyes, she was gone.

In the absence of her, he could hear the sirens and the boots of ARGUS soldiers as they hurried about their business, as if the woman Oliver had loved and lost had not appeared and vanished from his world all over again.

“That was… was that really her?” John asked in a trembling voice. “I don’t understand.”

Thea drew up to him and tucked herself in at his side. “Malcolm’s, um, dead.”

Oliver blinked. Then a snort left him. A tired, grateful, ache of a laugh followed, to the point where Thea was helping to support his weight.

“Yeah, John. That was her.”

Dinah Laurel Lance had wanted to be a police officer; she had been denied and became a lawyer. She had wanted to be his protege in the field; she had been denied and became a hero of her own. She had loved being the Black Canary; and when that had been taken away from her, she had found another way like all the times before. A way that had never been meant for her, but the way her life had been forged by forces beyond either of their control.

Those who rose up in this city or around the world like Darhk would wish they were under the mercy of the Black Canary. For none would be able to hide from the Spectre. Just as he would never deny the love he held for her ever again.

Though they couldn’t be together, Laurel would remain forever a part of his life and his heart, and he would hers until the very end.


End file.
